A great NY Times article sent over by Rupa Basu, Biotronik Senior Vice President, Marketing, Corporate Accounts & Strategy with a surprising hypothesis on why women, many of them highly educated, may be dropping out of the workforce.

After impressive increases from the 1950s, the percent of women working in the US has remained consistently flat since the mid-1990s.

This new study suggests that the pressures of being a working mother have stepped up to a new level in terms of time and financial resources. Medtech, among other industries, mandates long hours that are not compatible with raising children.

According to the study, most college-educated women do not plan to pause their careers. Women reported being fulfilled by their professions, even after having children. These women, unlike their spouses, reported that being a parent was unexpectedly more difficult than previously anticipated. The authors of the study suggest that women with demanding jobs who have children are apt to have spouses with similar jobs, with equally long and rigid time requirements.

In a recent Pew Research Center study of two-income families, fathers were significantly more likely than mothers to report that home and child responsibilities were shared equally. The perceptions of the mothers were supported by substantial research, from diaries of the ways two-income couples spend their time. Furthermore, the time requirements and financial costs of preparing children for college start earlier and demand more investment, requiring at least one parent to focus more on child care with increasing amounts of time spent on college preparation.